On the Abolition of Misfortune
by Kumquats
Summary: Traces the history of a teenager named Abel Carpainter and a particular golden statue back into the 1980s, through Giygas's assault on Eagleland, and beyond...


The Devil's Maw in Fourside is the "in" place, okay? It's the hot spot, the real deal, the one place you gotta be if you're someone trying to be anyone in Fourside. This is a fancy way of saying, if you were cool and you lived in Fourside and you were a teenager back in 1986, of course you knew about the Devil's Maw. You knew darn well what it was, darn well who hung out there, and if you were part of that crowd, Hell, all the better. The Devil's Maw in Fourside was where it was it, even if no one knew why at the time, and the Monkeys wouldn't let themselves be seen anywhere but that little nexus of cool tucked into the Fourside Bay.

The meetings were impromptu. The Monkeys themselves were impromptu, spontaneous, ragtag and ramshackle and thrown together at a moment's notice each time it was pertinent they needed to come together and the Monkeys wouldn't, couldn't change this. No one could come up with a real rhyme or reason they ever got together, could ever rationalize why the same folk'd always show up at that dinky little overhang time and time again with the same ideas in mind. The Monkeys were interim vandals, part-time criminals; it's a worthwhile distinction to make, because by and large these weren't bad kids. That was the exception, and not the rule, and the better part of why Josef and Abel were duking it out on the cliff that day back in 1986.

Abel with his back to the city is statuesque, something tall and strong and masculine, and with his blue bandana floating in the breeze he is the perfect example of what all the Monkeys aspire to be. He's decked out in the traditional denim, blue crowning his broad shoulders and tight blue jeans that are stick-straight. It's not exactly the style of the time, it's a bit out-moded, but the Monkeys have picked it up as their ownthis is the vandal style, the criminal flair. These are teenagers, and it's style over substance, and Abel on the cliff silhouetting the sunset has style in spades.

"You all know why we came out here today, right?" Abel speaks in a clear, smooth tone. His voice is spot-on, does not give or push, does not resonate or lie flat but comes and goes like a river. The Monkeys on the clifftop are a blue-blue sea, and Abel is clearly the leader. "You all know we got some troublemakers we gotta take care of, I hope y'all know, and I hope you know just who I'm talkin' about," Abel continues, slowly and dramatically turning around, like a scene lifted from a movie the meeting plays out in slow motion. A shorter boy, noticably depraved and dirty, is thrown at Abel's feet by a couple more fellows decked out in blue denim and before anyone can say anything, the boy hawks it up and spits square on Abel's boots.

The boots are steel-toed. One kick sends the boy reeling and sobbing, holding his face with two hands and trying to stop blood and tears all at once. Abel is smug and supreme looking down at the writhing mass at his feet, taller and stronger and more the leader than ever before. The assembly can only smile and applaud the motion, cheer with the simultaneous disorder and harmony a congress of criminals provides.

"You just don't get it, do ya, Josef? You just can't follow freakin' orders, and this" each word at this point is slow and methodical, punctuated by another kick to the ribs of writhing Josef, "is what" a square impact to a crying boy who is convinced, more or less, he is going to die, "you get!" Abel stops beating Josef and the two are at near-silent odds. Abel breathes deep but Josef's sobbing is louder. The Monkeys are satisfied. Abel nudges Josef once again with his boot, gets no response, and satisfied himself, turns back to his adoring crowd.

"So we have business again," he begins anew, in his usual smooth tone, "and it's just as important as usual, and we're gonna have to move just as fast as usual. There's beef to be taken up with the department store, and I don't know quite how this is gonna work out so I'll just tell you all to use your own best judgement, go get what you think is the right tool for the job, and we'll get to it." No further explanation is given, the subtext of the task at hand is well-understood, and the silence begins again, but for Josef's sobbing as the crowd disperses without a word, blue-blue blurs in the twilight.

Only Josef and Abel are left, Abel on the cliff of the Devil's Maw, overlooking the bay and Josef still a crunched and crippled form in the grass. There is blood and there are tears, but more than anything there is the incessant whispering of the Devil's Maw, the sewage out-lines that feed into the Fourside Bay. The namesake of the spot, they're just what the Monkeys need to keep their place of business unoccupied, because the place looks, smells, and sounds like crap. They never get any trouble here from the uncool kids, those kids who just don't understand what they set out to do, and much less any trouble from any adults. This isn't to say no one over eighteen has ever seen the Devil's Maw, they come by with some regularity; but more often than not, they fall in line with the Monkeys, are the same impromptu foot-soldiers the teenagers are, and follow whatever the task at hand is.

There's just that one exception, little Josef, with his jeans two-sizes too small and his jacket three sizes too big. Josef never follows orders, is always the one the cops see bashing windows and mailboxes long after the rest of the Monkeys have left. Josef isn't quite content to follow the regimentations of Abel, thinks himself a bit above a law unreasoned and undefended, and is just the kind of bad kid who takes the mystery out of the Monkeys' work and reduces them to mere teenage vandals. Josef's just a bad kid, they all say, he's a bad apple from a bad neighborhood with a bad background and we don't have any problems with him, no-no, but he's a liability.

Abel told that to the rest of the Monkeys that day, April 21st 1986, before Josef showed up. "He's a liability, he isn't someone good to have around, he's got no god self-control." The Monkeys were, ironically-enough, all about order. Command and loyalty were firm and well-defined, there was no room for typical teenage liberties under Abel's eye; the entire affair was military, a set pattern, a repetition and a boring amalgamation of what the schools and the parents couldn't do. Abel had a hold on these kids, these people, whoever it was that showed up and was a Monkey for the day, and Abel would throw the Monkeys wherever Abel told them was "appropriate", was the "target" that needed to be messed up that day.

It was irrational, the entire experience, irrational and surreal and Josef never put much faith in the system because he couldn't understand just how everyone else could fall in line so easily when there was so little information put on the table for them. Josef always wondered where everyone else's free will had gone, why they didn't dare step in while forty of them watched one kid beat him half to death, always take the time out to wonder why everyone else was showing up because the only person Josef even half-understood was himself. Josef could rationalize his own turning to crime, could rationalize his misdeeds with what he considered sound logic, could at least attempt to back up his anarchist leanings. Josef just wrote it off to himself, reasoned it however he had to at the moment, but for all intents and purposes he was just a messed-up kid with a violent streak. Abel didn't notice when the sobbing stopped.

Josef lie ready and coiled like a snake for some time, while dusk slowly changed over to night, watching Abel pace back and forth on the cliffside, he lie in wait while his rage threatened to boil over. He couldn't stand the notion of how demoralized he had just been, how humiliated he was, what a joke he had been made but most of all Josef couldn't fathom what he would do now that he couldn't roll with the Monkeys.

Josef didn't understand it, but Josef needed that. Josef needed to break things, needed to spit on Fourside and everyone there but Josef couldn't rationalize doing this on his own. Josef didn't know what he'd do without the Monkeys, and in that point of hatred Josef hatched his plan and found the strength to keep it in check while the rest of the Monkeys slowly trickled back into sight, with their baseball bats and their slingshots. Josef was a bomb already primed and packed when Abel beat him up like that, Josef was that liability they all saw him as, they just never figured out where that liability would hurt them. No one expected anything could ever befall Abel. Abel was above danger, Abel was golden and perfect.

But an eye for an eye, a humiliation for humiliation, Josef whispered into the dirt. Josef let the Monkeys pour back in, a slow blue-blue wave in the night, and then, when Abel first opened his mouth to speak, while his eyes were glazed-over and sunken like they always were while he gave his speeches, Josef pounced. He hit Abel square in the stomach with his full force, latched himself firmly onto the Monkeys' leader, and with momentum to spare the entangled mass flew over the cliff and down the hundred or so feet into the stirring, trash-capped bay.

This was in the dead of night. In heavy water. These kids were wearing full denim, they weren't in that great shape to begin with and there really wasn't any sensible hope of them swimming the half-mile to the nearest beach, where the cliff face finally broke. Josef hit the water with Abel still in his arms, finally let go when he hit the rocky shallows and the pain wracked every muscle in his body, and shot Abel a smug smile underwater as he was assured now they were both going to die, and that was enough for Josef. It was murky, but not dark; Josef could clearly make out Abel in front of him, hovering for just a moment before he jacknifed into the shadows and an exasperated and confused Josef could just barely grab his boot in a desperate attempt to stop him before he was gone.

Abel swam. He pushed forward mightily, totally against the current, came up against the cliff face towing Josef all the while. Josef struggled to climb up Abel's leg, tried his best to engulf and drown Abel just as sure as he himself was drowning. Josef's eyes were failing, and he couldn't hold his breath much longer, and every portion of his body was numb with pain but Abel kept swimming, and in those last few moments before the cold salt-water took the air out of Josef for good, he saw something up ahead, something bright and glistening through the filthy water. A statue, of what appeared to be a man, was buried in the gravel and with a single mighty tug Abel managed to pull it free. That was the last thing Josef saw, cast in bloody redscale, was that statuesome man, strong tall and masculine, crowned with horns distinctly demonic. The image sent a spasm down Josef's spine, loosed his grip on Abel, tore the two teenagers apart and in that last moment of fleeting consciousness, the smooth speaking voice Josef attributed to Abel floated through his mind, "You'll understand by the time you wake up. I promise you won't be confused any longer."

Helicopters were over the bay within fifteen minutes. There was no sign of any fall, no disturbance in the gravel or the cliff surface and no bodies to be found anywhere. The obituaries of Abel Carpainter and Josef Hammerstein saw print on the first of May, and Fourside saw immediate respite from the mock-terrorism of the Monkeys, who disappeared overnight. The Devil's Maw lost its appeal, lost its name, became some uncool place that just smelled and looked like crap, and blue denim no longer had the niche popularity it had before. Josef and Abel were just orphans, were forgotten by Fourside's Civil Protection Agency overnight, forgotten by friends in more-or-less the same time-span. Their deaths were blemishes on the city, and the city was quick to sweep under the rug what it had no explanation for.

1986 ended uneventfully, no more than a mish-mash of rumors. There was no real news to print, no headlines worth mentioning, and the rumors circulating through Eagleland took on larger-than-life personalities. Banner headlines introduced previously unknown astronomers who each laid claim to the discovery of a meteor they claimed was going to collide with the Earth. Second-and-third page columns were full of the ramblings of self-proclaimed prophets who were convinced the end of days was short in coming. To the public's dismay was no meteorite impact, no apocalypses to be found. The years dragged on.

87 followed the same pattern, and 88 too. The eighties ended stretching even farther for news, the public having grown sick of the same doomsday theories that never held true. Teenage gang leaders got interviews that made front page, punks and drunks decked out in the blue-denim motif filled the photographs as small-scale civil unrest took hold of Eagleland. But the public grew sick of this, too, grew tired of the same-old same-old bad news. Newspapers desperate to keep the public interested began publishing public-interest stories, a hit-and-miss tactic started in January 1990 when the Onett Tribune scrapped together a story about a boy in the hospital poised to make a miraculous recovery from a coma.

It wasn't front-page material, not by a long shot. The story was insubstantial, lacking facts; the boy had been dropped off a few years prior by a mister L. X. Agerate, had been an unidentifiable body when he was found in the waiting room. The general formula of the public-interest story fell through when the victim was nameless, when sympathy was impossible to generate. The boy woke up alone shortly after the article saw print, was offered no further help from the hospital until he could produce some sort of medical insurance, and was out on the street with nothing but a map to Mr. Agerate's house the very same day he opened his eyes for the first time in four years.

His reception with Mr. Agerate was similarly cold at first. The boy wasn't even allowed inside at first, had to call the police and had to have an interim decision made that this man was his legal guardian, and was obligated to unlock the door, and the awkwardness of the situation was only exacerbated by the in-and-out memory of the boy. His name and hometown, most everything prior to his discovery in Mr. Agerate's basement was lost. Things did not improve. The boy's memory was deemed unrecoverable, "Therapy would be an expensive waste," they said, and Mr. Agerate agreed, but this was not all bad news. Justin Agerate, Lier's son-in-law, was eventually accepted by the general populace of Onett, for the most part. Justin went to school. Justin had a summer job, had a handful of friends and played stickball on the weekends. Justin had a little corner of Mr. Agerate's house all to himself, with a drawer full of comic books and Justin had forgotten there ever was a time before he lived there.

They said this was healthy. The doctors stopped calling, Justin's teachers stopped paying special attention to him, and the strange boy that might's well have had fallen into town from the sky was no longer the oddity he once was. Justin enjoyed the treatment, was glad that he finally fit in, but noticed the farther they got from the public eye the more often his makeshift father would disappear. There was a single locked door in the house Justin wasn't allowed in, and it was through that one locked door that Lier would disappear time-and-time again for hours on end, eventually escalating to days. Unrest spread through the house like contagion.

"Fitting in" became dull and boring, and at times painful, as fitting in meant Justin received his fair share of harassment from the growing town gang, the Sharks. Justin lost sleep to incoherent nightmares that spoke to him in tongues he didn't know, whispered to him about pasts unknown. Justin would hear voices lying awake at night, would scrape out a day-to-day living like a beggar as Mr. Agerate no longer went to work. There was no food set on the table for him, there was what he provided for himself, and the growing discomfort in Justin's mind only made the more esoteric symptoms of his suffering more prominent. Home had become a ramshackle house, a vestige of poverty that left old memories on the tip of recollection and a strange fear of being torn into two separate people in the back of Justin's mind.

Voices grew louder. Nightmares grew more realistic, more intense. Nothing improved. At the height of what Justin believed he could withstand, the last night before Justin was ready to call the doctors, call the police, call anyone and ask for help, Lier opened the locked door just enough to poke his dissheveled face through, and whispered to Justin, "Come on, I want you to see. You need to see, it really wants to see you too."

Justin looked at Lier through the dark, and all that Justin needed to see was the glazed-over look in Lier's eyes for the puzzle to begin coming together. Justin knew what Lier wanted to show him, knew what was in the basement of this house and Justin could picture very clearly in his mind that golden statue, tall strong and masculine. Justin scrambled to his feet, smiling in spite of himself, because the incoherency of his nightmares was starting to come clear and the one message that resonated in his head, in a smooth unwaivering voice, was familiar and a promise that Justin-Josef still held faith in.

"You'll understand by the time you wake up. I promise you won't be confused any longer."

That night in Onett, a new star burnt brightly overhead; great things had been set in motion, the least of which was concealed in the dwelling of a madman and his adopted son. A boy on a hilltop lie half-asleep in bed watching the star sink towards Earth; a group of had-been nerds, mocked and beaten and insulted, watch from an arcade rooftop, and a town away in Twoson, a new religion is being birthed beneath the cosmic spectacle: a religion whose leader promises he can tear Eagleland from its unhappiness for good.

That night in Eagleland, April 16th 1992, there would be no rest for the weary. Great things had been set in motion, and from deep beneath Onett a smooth bass voice reached out to all the country, and reassured the would-be dreamers, "Go to sleep, and you'll understand by the time you wake up. I promise: you will not be confused any longer."


End file.
